Economics, Education and Labor Market Outcomes

Taiwan Women and Family Studies

Principal Investigator: William L. Parish, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology Institution: The National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago (NORC)

Topical Areas

The survey was a collaboration between the National Taiwan University Economics Department, the Academia Sinica Economics Institute, the Republic of China Ministry of Interior Social Statistics Division, the Directorate General of Budget Accounting and Statistics, and NORC at the University of Chicago: Professors Ching-hsi Chang and Liu Ying-chuan, Economics Department, National Taiwan University; Professor Ching-lung Tsay and Alfred Ko-Wei Hu, Academia Sinica; and Woody Carter and William L. Parish, NORC at the University of Chicago. Funding was provided by the Republic of China, National Science Council grants to National Taiwan University and Academia Sinica, the Ministry of the Interior, and a National Institute of Child Health and Development, Washington, D. C., grant # R01 HD023322 to NORC at the University of Chicago.

Population Surveyed

Island-wide survey in Spring 1989 of 3,803 women aged 25 to 59, of all marital statuses and resident in both urban and rural settings, making it fully representative of all adult, working-age women.

Abstract

This survey investigates the determinants of women’s position in society, the structure of familial transfers of time and money, and the inter-penetration of these two phenomena. The study of women’s position focuses on both the determinants of her labor market experience and the consequences of that experience for her physical and psychological well-being and intra-family relations. Unique conditions in Taiwan allow us to make a new assessment of the relative importance of market and family determinants (including grandparents’ help with child care) of women’s entrance into the labor market, continuity of employment, career mobility, and income rewards. Our study of familial transfers deals with intergenerational support, the relative investment in sons and daughters, the contribution of wife’s wages and other income earners to overall equality, the consequences of public in place of private transfers, and the future of joint residence, sharing, and support within families. Our comparison of families at different stages of the family life course, as well as at different income and governmental support levels, contributes to current theoretical debates about intergenerational support, human capital investments, and the sources of family income inequality. We begin with a government survey of income and expenditure that includes considerable detail on occupation, income, transfers, savings, investments, and other assets. Then, we run our own resurvey of a subsample of 3,803 urban and rural women, aged 25 to 59, including married and single, widowed and divorced. Our resurvey adds details on hours of work, place of work, the source and destination of transfers, kinship networks, uses of time, well-being, and intra-family relations.

Documentation

Data

SAS [SAS Transport format( 28,248,320 bytes) ] SPSS [SPSS System File(version 10) (10,392,632 bytes) ] STATA [STATA version 7.0(11,817,247 bytes) ] Variable labels for this data set are incomplete. To determine the content and meaning of variables, please consult the Code Book, above. Technical questions about the data or documentation should be referred to the Data Archive at the Social Science Reasearch Computing Center at the University of Chicago,sscs-data-archive@listhost.uchicago.edu